The present invention relates to a variable printing system, and specifically relates to such a variable printing system that conducts variable printing based on streamed variable print data.
In recent years, there has been proliferated a methodology called the “Transaction Mail Promotion” in which documents, each such as a monthly bill, an account statement, etc., are respectively combined with a kind of promotion advertisement so as to mail the combined printed products to customers. The abovementioned methodology called the “Transaction Mail Promotion” employs the variable printing process, in which a reuse object is retained in a cache memory so as to improve the processing efficiency by reusing the reuse object repeatedly.
In this connection, a host computer is usually employed for conducting the above-mentioned transaction process in regard to the documents, such as account statements, etc., so as to enforce the high-speed mass production process and to convert the print data into stream data. Accordingly, the printing apparatus that receives such the stream data should sequentially process the data concerned. For this purpose, various kinds of methodologies to improve the processing efficiency of the printing apparatus concerned have been proposed so far.
For instance, Tokkai 2001-199105 (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication) sets forth a printing apparatus that utilizes the static page elements in the form of static page layout objects to shorten the print job transmission time, and is added with the function for memorizing the static page layout objects in such an optimized format that makes the number of memory factors of the concerned printer small.
Further, Tokkai 2006-237825 (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication) sets forth an image processing apparatus that makes it possible to shorten the time required for the data synthesizing operation that is necessary to create the page data, when the printing operation is conducted on the basis of such a print file that includes objects for specifying the page and at least one of the objects is used at plural positions within the print file concerned.
However, in the variable printing operation such as the “Transaction Mail Promotion” printing mode, although a large amount of cache memory should be possibly employed for storing the streamed variable print data therein, it becomes highly possible that a malfunction caused by a memory overflow of the cache memory would occur even if a mass storage device is mounted into the printing apparatus concerned. Further, when a large amount of data is stored into the cache memory, a considerable amount of time should be consumed to retrieve the reusable object stored in the cache memory, resulting in a deterioration of the processing efficiency.
To overcome the abovementioned problem, it may be considered to employ such a method that the reusable objects are sorted on the basis of usage frequencies of them so as to effectively use the cache memory, as set forth in the above-cited prior art references. However, according to the conventional technology, there has been such a problem that, since the sorting operation is conducted by an apparatus that controls the variable printing operation, such as a print controlling apparatus, a printing apparatus or the like, and accordingly, the sorting operation cannot be implemented after all of the variable print data have once received, it has been impossible to speedily conduct the sorting operation. In addition, there has been such another problem that, in order to store the image data acquired by rasterizing the variable print data into the cache memory, a large amount of memory resources has been required.